Wednesday, May 02, 2007

By the Book

Today I've been thinking about my schedule.

I'm a person who likes a plan. It's not that I don't love spontaneity; I do. And it's not that I'm not brave about new things, because I'd like to think that I am. But in my ordinary, day-to-day life, I like to know what's about to happen. Though I think I'm a bit more rigorous about my schedule than most people.

Here's how it goes:

6:00 am: Wake. Feed dogs and turtle. Pee and brush teeth. Let dogs out. Check email. Let dogs in. Take shower, blow dry hair, dress. Make salad for lunch. Water back garden.

7:10 Go to work. Stop at gas station or grocery store if necessary. Write tests, distribute folders.

8:30-2:30 Teach

2:45 Walk a mile.

3:00 Visit Thomas at Fanboy. Head home.

3:30 Feed dogs and turtle. Water front and back gardens. Eat snack. Check bloglines, myspace and email. Clean turtle's cage.

4:15 Grade student work.

5:00 Walk 4 miles, with various people.

6:00 Watch/help Thomas prepare dinner

7:00 Eat. Watch TV.

9:00 Get in bed. Read. Sleep.

Begin again.

This is every day of my life. Today, 3 minor deviations caused stress: I forgot to put on deoderant (um, it's 90 degrees out and I smell horrifying), I forgot to write tests for my students last night and had to write 5 this morning at 7:30 and, last but not least, I had an extra minute between watering and leaving this morning so I called to check my bank balance and realized I was about to overdraw by 10 dollars.

This has cast a shadow over my otherwise predictable day.

How wedded are you to your schedule?

3 comments:

velocibadgergirl said...

I need to be as organized as you to get everything done, but I tend to fail miserably. I dutifully write everything down in my big fat planner, and then when I get home, I always forget to look at it to see what I'm supposed to be doing.

Amanda said...

I am wedded to physical order more than temporal order, but that may change now that I am (very nearly) out of school and my schedule will become more regular. In the past, classes being on odd days and the ebb and flow of schoolwork kept anything about my scheduling from being really organized. However, I'm quite compulsive about some things, so maybe I'll develop a neurotic daily schedule when I have the opportunity to.

Cue said...

I am wedded to writing down, making up, and sometimes putting an insane schedule into an excel document (I am not proud of this), then doing something like over-sleeping by accident and having a total melt because I fucked the schedule I myself created. Yes, I realize how completely crazy that sounds. We call this, Going to the Bad Place.

...Otherwise, I prefer to be unscheduled. Unless I have to show up for a job/outing/date/plans/whatever. But clearly, schedules freak me out.